The Huck Finn Experience

1. Have you read the novel –Huck Finn- before? If so where and why?

I first read Huck Finn in my 10th grade English class as an assigned reading. It was part of the school curriculum and had been for years, I'm sure.

3. What was your response to reading Huck Finn, and what do you remember from your
reading? Also, did you actually read the whole novel, or just parts of it? Did you read
Cliff Notes or Monarch Notes instead?

Surprisingly, to me at least, I really enjoyed the novel. I read the whole thing - the whole thing - unlike many of my classmates. Sparknotes was helpful in reviewing for the final test because I was the student that read ahead and by the time the unit was ending it had been several weeks since I last turned a page in the book. I remembered a surprising number of events, though the most clear in my mind was the scene where Huck is subject to a particularly clever scheme to reveal whether he's truly the girl he's pretending to be. Other moments were less clear, but I still remembered Huck pretending he had a smallpox ridden family in order to protect Jim and that the Duke and King used the phrase "Women and Children Not Admitted" to draw a big crowd.

4. If you were assigned to read Huck Finn in a previous class, either here or in high
school, how did your class as a whole react to the novel? Why do you think your
instructor assigned the novel? How did he or she try to “teach” the novel?

Like with most books my English class read, the class wasn't the most fond of the book. Most of them didn't read it and they didn't really connect with it. To be honest, I'm not sure even my teacher liked the novel. It was part of our class because it was part of the curriculum and no other reason that I could tell. I can't remember actually learning anything about book, sadly.

5. If you were required to read Huck Finn in a previous class, what sort of assignments
were you required to complete, and what exactly did you do during the classes when
Huck Finn was being discussed.

Though I'm sure there was more than one assignment attached to the the Huck Finn unit, I only remember the one major project I had to do. We had to take any passage from the novel and represent it in any number of multimedia forms. It could be a video reenactment, a picture book, a diagram or a model, or anything else we could come up with. I chose to do what amounted to basically an audio reenactment and I wrote a piano background for the scene where Huck pretends his family has smallpox. We spent a few days presenting our projects to the class, and mine was fortunately well received. Besides that, I really can't remember what we did when discussing Huck Finn.

6. Huck Finn is still one of the most controversial and most banned books in America.
Why is it so controversial?


I think a majority of the controversy is over the use of the n-word. Though it was vernacular in Twain's time (and Huck Finn is clearly written using vernacular), it is no longer a socially acceptable word. It's difficult for teachers to teach tactfully and many parents balk at having their children forced to read a book containing what most perceive to be a vulgar term. I suspect the depiction of Jim also factors into the controversy. It's true that a major purpose of the novel is to show the humanity of African-Americans, but alongside his humanity Jim is still a stereotyped character. He's superstitious and a simpleton and he talks like the uneducated man he is. To some, this is just as distasteful as the n-word.

7. Is Huck Finn still relevant to you as college student today? Should it continue to be
taught in college classrooms?

I wasn't able to connect as closely to Huck Finn as a character as I could in high school but I was happy to find that I was able to get more out of the novel. The subtleties of what Twain was doing where clearer to me as a college student and I appreciated being able to see better the systematic dismantling of the assumption slaves have no humanity. Though I originally scoffed at having to revisit a book read by freshman and sophomores in high school, I think it's a valuable addition to my curriculum and should continue to have a presence in college classrooms.

8. The general consensus among critics is that Huck Finn is a brilliant and powerful
novel, but also a flawed and problematic novel. What do you think might be flawed and/
or problematic about the novel?


I find it curious that we're attempting to describe a work of literature as "flawed and problematic" as though the author didn't uphold to the standards of how to write a perfect novel. Couldn't we just as easily describe the parts of the novel that are flawed or problematic as an artistic choice Twain made? That aside, I think the flaws and problems lie in the scattered feel of the novel. It's hardly a cohesive work, dramatically shifting between every third of the novel. Even in the middle of each of these sections, it has a piecemeal feel as though Twain was only loosely tying unrelated stories together in a shoddy excuse for a novel. Still, the work is enjoyable to read and makes a powerful point about slavery and racism, and I shy away from calling Huck Finn flawed.

Rediscovering Huck Finn

I read "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" in high school, four years ago. I was surprised but pleased to discover that I really enjoyed the novel and actually read the whole thing, unlike so many of my classmates. After learning that I would be revisiting the novel for this class, I had hoped that I would remember most of the story. After all, I could rattle off the major plot points and give brief biographies for most of the characters, and even wax eloquently about some of Twain's underlying agenda.

Sadly for me, rereading the novel proved that not only had I forgotten much of the book, but even the first time around I had missed a huge amount of Mark Twain's points. Huck Finn has far more depth than a simple story and really is a scathing description of a society and culture. I picked up on more this read but discovered, much to the chagrin of every English teacher I've encountered in my life, I didn't much care for that aspect.

More than anything else, I think, Twain was a good story teller. It was the characters I fell in love with the first time I read the story and it was the characters that welcomed me back.

Jim greated me with a simple and characteristic, "Who dah?" For a while, it wasn't the Jim that I remembered and I questioned my memory of the character. Where was the man so kind-hearted and honest, ready to do the right thing and so capable of both befriending and mentoring Huck? This simpleton with a hairball, convinced that witches would fly him all over the state wasn't the Jim I knew. No, that Jim came later, slowly growing out of the pages and into a wonderful reality of a man. It was the Jim who refused to leave Tom Sawyer bleeding in the woods that I remembered. He was still there and I discovered that I still admired the man. He was uneducated and forever convinced that his hairy chest meant he would be rich one day, but that doesn't mean he wasn't the character with the purest of hearts.

Then there was Tom Sawyer, the rapscallion with such a large imagination and a propensity for getting himself in trouble. I had forgotten how much of a distaste I had for Tom in this book. After finishing Huckleberry Finn, I enjoyed it enough to venture into other Twain works and read The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, a book where I discovered Tom in a different light. In that novel, I liked him, but the Tom in Huckleberry's story was different. Continually, I found myself frustrated by the boy's total and utter lack of sense. He couldn't comprehend a serious situation and I was especially bothered by Tom when he concocted such an absurd scenario to free Jim.

Often in stark contrast to Tom was Huck, but I was surprised to find that I didn't like Huck all the way through the novel as I thought I would. I began the book with a sort of ambivalence towards the rough and tumble boy, no longer as intranced by his rebellious nature as I was years before. In essence, he moved with the river. He hardly ever took action but allowed himself to pushed along by random happenstance and the actions of others. The change began when the Duke and the King got involved with the deceased Peter Wilk's fortune and Huck realized that he couldn't let these two con men get away with their scheme. As soon as Huck started to let his morality direct his actions, I began to like him more, but I wasn't fully set in my opinion. It was only after Jim had been turned in as a runaway slave that I think Huck really began to take action. He could have moved on like he did so many times before. In fact, he was tempted to just that, tempted to write a note to Miss Watson so that he could justify forgetting all about the man who had cared for him, befriended him, and mentored him. But he didn't.

Huck found himself, as he said, "betwixt two thing": he could make a firm decision and act on it or he could return again to the river to float on into infinity. And with a "All right, then, I'll go to hell," he chose. And he chose to act.

I was proud of Huck in that moment. Not so much that he could see past Jim's race to care for him but simply that he had grown to where he could make a decision on his own, knowing full well the consequences. Sadly, this independance was short lived.

Suddenly, Tom was back on the scene and Huck reverted to following the direction he was given by others. Anyone could see that Tom's plans where ridiculous just as easily as Huck could see that and yet he let Tom take the lead. There were moments of resistance, but never substantially and I was frustrated. I wanted Huck to remember that moment of strength he had on the riverbank, with the torn up letter in his hands, and the determination took to decide to free Jim. That Huck, who I saw but briefly, would have rejected Tom's plan for the absurdity it was. Where had that Huck gone?

The book ends nicely and everything worked out well, but I was saddened to think that maybe Huck hadn't truly come of age. He was back to fighting off those who wanted to "sivilize" him, just like he began. Where was the progress? What had happened to the growth Huck made when he decided to free Jim? I was disappointed.

I didn't feel this way after finishing the book the first time. Then, I was delighted at the journey Twain had taken me on and that everyone could go home happy. This time, everyone went home happy except for me.

The First Conversation

The number of emails Bandar and I passed back and forth reached into the double digits before we were finally able to meet face to face. His messages typically consisted of one line and gave me no hint of what he was truly like and I was ready for anything when we finally sat down and had our first conversation.

That said, I wasn't really expecting the fellow who sat down across from me. With long hair and mirrored aviator glasses, I could tell he was older than me by at least a few years. In actuality, it turns out he is 30 years old while I'm a mere 19. The age gap surprised him as much as me, and we talked briefly about how I was young for my grade. From there, the conversation was all over the map.

It took a while to get used to how Bandar spoke; he used the right words and in the right ways but with a distinctively Saudi Arabian accent. It wasn't too hard to follow him, what was harder was paying attention to how I was talking. I could tell that I lost him a couple times, either going too fast or slurring words in just the wrong way. He never asked for clarification and preferred instead to move on to another topic, which made me feel bad. The goal was never to be that annoying American who spoke so slowly as to be insulting, but I didn't want to be insensitive either. With luck, I will improve at this over time and become more comfortable in my conversations with Bandar.

Of the many topics we breezed through, I remember most distinctly our discussion about various American cities. I was talking about where I was from in Michigan and mentioned that I was from the Detroit area, because that tends to be the only city anyone recognizes from my beloved home state. Bandar did know the city and asked if it was "dangerous". I was a little confused, and he tried to clarify by mentioning the "black people" there and asked again if that made it dangerous. He had been looking into universities across the country but some of them were in dangerous areas and he was very interested in which areas where dangerous and which weren't.

The confusion lessened slightly, and I understood that he was talking about gangs, and Detroit sure does have a gang presence and a big percentage of the residents are in fact African-American. Still, I have a deep love for Detroit. The museum of art there is wonderful, and I enjoy going and hearing music at the concert hall, but it's true that these landmarks are surrounded by run down and abandoned buildings. I didn't dwell on this point and chose rather to talk about how I live an hour and a half away from the city and we moved on to other topics.

Later, though, it returned when Bandar was talking about his brother who is studying in Seattle, another "dangerous" city. I was surprised by this. As a Michigander halfway across the country, you get used to people (a) not knowing where Michigan is and confusing it with Minnesota, (b) thinking Detroit encompasses the whole of the state, and (c) assuming that upwards of twenty people are shot every day by gangs in Detroit. I'm used to these (completely inaccurate) assumptions. But I had never thought of Seattle as a dangerous city. Seattle! Do dangerous people really want to live in a place as dreary and rainy as Seattle? I suppose that I had an incredulous look on my face and so Bandar explained that there are a lot of Mexicans there, dealing drugs in the city streets.

For a while, even after Bandar and I parted ways, I couldn't help but think that these opinions were horribly racist. Not all Mexicans deal drugs in Seattle and not all African-Americans run with gangs in Detroit. Still, I didn't want to just assume that this man who I had hardly even met and only talked to for an hour was a racist. That's jumping to conclusions, so I kept turning over these thoughts in my mind. I remembered then something else Bandar had said. As the conversation was winding down, he thanked me for talking to him. In his experience, 80 percent of Americans don't talk to outsiders and I think that he was being generous with that number.

In this country, people have a tendency to associate with people like themselves. There's a number of reasons for this, and I could easily list five off the top of my head, but you and I both know it's true. Outsiders are barely acknowledged, let alone welcomed. This is true whether you're from Saudi Arabia like Bandar, an illegal immigrant from the south, or just an urban boy with the wrong skin color. So when Bandar talks about the African-Americans making Detroit dangerous or the Mexicans dealing drugs in Seattle, whose racism is showing: his or ours?

Can I blame this Saudi Arabian for picking up on stereotypes we pass around to each other? He hadn't been to either of these cities, he had just heard about them. It was uncomfortable to hear him say it but sometimes it's uncomfortable to look into a mirror. This wasn't Saudi Arabian culture staring me in the face, it was American.

Youth, Speed, and the Pursuit of Happiness (Library Research)

I like being honest, so let me be wholly and perfectly honest with you for a moment: I got lost in the library today. You could take that to mean that after finding myself in the midst of so many great pieces of literature and books calling to me from every side, I lost myself in the words of the ages. Which sounds just nerdy and sentimental enough to be me, except that is nowhere near to what actually happened. I legitimately got lost somewhere between the organic chemistry and brain surgery sections of the periodical section in the basement. I think this is embarrassing. Sure, I knew where I was well enough to get back out into the real world and go on with my life, but that wasn't the issue. I could not find Time magazine and had no idea where I was in this strange numbering system.

I was saved by a fellow classmate, also hunting down old periodicals, but the best he could point me towards was Vogue. I didn't want to read Vogue. Or for that matter, Good Housekeeping, Glamour, or any of the periodicals in that area. But it was that, organic chemistry, or continuing to wander through the basement of the library like a starved fish looking for water. So Vogue it was.

Unsurprisingly, I've never read a modern day Vogue, so I had no comparison for this periodical. It looked old, with very simple black and white line drawings, and an incredible number of ads for lingerie. If the ad was over three square inches big, you could bet it was either trying to sell you lingerie or rubber garments intended to reduce fat. I haven't the slightest idea of how the second is supposed to work, but I can assure you the illustrations of the garments looked just as silly as it sounds. Still, that's not what I was subjecting myself to the horrors of a fashion magazine for, and I hunted through the contents of several issues trying to find anything about coming of age and not about how to be a good hostess for a dinner party.

I struck gold about three issues into 1921. There was an editorial titled "Youth, Speed, and the Pursuit of Happiness".

It would appear that even back in the day, teenage drivers were a public menace. They drove fast, hit and killed people, and didn't stop to say they were sorry. The author was exploring not just how to curb this sort of thing, but also why it was happening. In the end, it came down to the simple reason of youth. It was the authors opinion that children of that age can't help themselves and that recklessness is just natural. The older generation may disagree but that's just because they're so much closer to the grave and guard what little life they have remaining so much more preciously. In fact, the author proposed that the "only certain remedy is the dreary one of age and it's accompanying caution."

Did you catch that? The "only certain remedy is the dreary one of age..."

What a surprising stance! To this author, to come of age is to become dreary. To grow up is to grow old, and to grow old is grow dull. To the adults of this age, the youth have all the fun and once you reach a certain age you must put such tomfooleries behind you and get on with a respectable, official, profession, and totally boring life. It's a very romanticized and dreamy look back at youth. Or so it is until the article continues. Suddenly, the author is discussing the savagery that lies beneath a thin veneer in all youth. It's a sudden shift that insists that it is not pure recklessness at play in car accidents but also a lust for power and "wanton cruelty". It's a strange dichotomy, but that's this author's view on youth.

The article continued, discussing what could be done politically to prevent further accidents on the road and I quickly lost interest. The truly fascinating part for me is imagining how this view from the elder generation could change the coming of age process for the teens of that era. Who would want to grow up when you know that to grow up is to have to suddenly abandon all fun for a boring, meaningless, monotone life? I would never want to grow up. And how it would feel to know that your elders are forever watching you for that beastly nature they think you have inside you? I don't know if that would push me to be a perfect angel or just fulfill their expectation of my savage nature.

But has society really changed so much? I can still see hints of each viewpoint in the beliefs of many I've encountered during my life. Perhaps this ninety year old magazine, printed all in black and white and filled with long dead fashion tips, isn't as removed from today as I thought it was.

Humor, Gardens, and Candide

On my way to start reading Candide for the first time, I was diverted by a friend who asked me what book I was carrying around. I showed her the cover and mentioned that I really had no idea even what sort of book it was, much less what it was about. Surprisingly, just the sight of the cover was enough to incite an exclamation of delight from her. Very quickly, she began telling me how much she enjoyed reading the text in high school and how her teacher had read it aloud to the class. The novella, she said, was one of her favorite books, and I was sure to enjoy it. Just this was hard to swallow on its own, but she continued and insisted that it was actually a very funny story.

I didn't believe her.

I figured this was just the sort of thing that happens when you're walking around in an honors dorm while carrying around fine literature. After all, I do know for a fact someone down the hall from me is likely to list the Iliad amongst her favorite books. Well, I read the Iliad and it is far from making the cut for me. Maybe I'm showing a lack of culture, or an underdeveloped palate for quality writing, but I did not have high expectations for Candide. Even after the prologue insisted that Voltaire's "fun remains modern and relevant", I was skeptical. At this point, it was almost a goal to make it through the whole work without even cracking a smile. I had set my expectations and that was that.

Or so I thought.

I laughed before I had even read two sentences. Really, what kind of name is Baron Thunder-Ten-Tronckh? I continued to be amused on through the second paragraph and it got better from there. I thoroughly enjoyed Pangloss, an instructor of "metaphysico-theologico-cosmoloonigology" (again, what kind of science is that?!), and was disappointed to hear of his death. Now who would provide amusing philosophical nonsense for me to chortle at? Thankfully, Voltaire clearly knew my thoughts exactly and proceeded to bring Pangloss back from the grave with all the finesse of an elephant attempting open heart surgery. Voltaire was definitely abusing his abilities as writer and cared nothing for plot integrity or simple believability, but he clearly didn't care. And to be frank, neither did I. I was happy to have Pangloss back.

And then there was the woman who only had a single buttock having had the other removed to be eaten as a "rumpsteak". Truly, this is a horrible tragedy for the woman in question and I feel a little bad for being so highly amused, but I am. I was intrigued when it was mentioned early on that the old woman would ride a horse with only one buttock but I never imagined a reason such as the one finally given. This sort of unexpected and mildly absurd humor appeared often in Candide, complementing a story that was itself often unexpected and wholly unpredictable. I was delighted with it.

I do realize, of course, that there's an another whole layer to the story beneath that of the simple humor. The satire is both abundant and sarcastic and it is obvious that Voltaire had an agenda when writing this tale. I was interested by the portrayal and competition between the all-for-the-best philosophy and the nothing-for-the-best philosophy, and though I found myself siding with Candide and his bright optimism, I wasn't entirely satisfied with the belief. Something just wasn't right, but it wasn't that I disagreed, per se. As a part of my Christian beliefs, and without going too into depth, I do believe that God has a very big impact on the happenings in my life and is leading me towards what one might call the best of all possible worlds. So what is it that didn't set well with me about the way Candide lived out this particular philosophy?

My answer came at the end of the novel, when Candide has a sudden shift in behavior. Up until this point, Candide had always tried to explain away every event with Pangloss' best of all possible worlds’ philosophy. Nothing was outside of his reason and his focus on this philosophy was intense. Little was more important to him than probing the world in this abstract way, talking around every plot twist and random occurrence. This is not to say that there is anything inherently wrong with such behavior, but he seemed so often to neglect the substantial parts of life. He forewent actually living life for pondering about life, but at the end he finally got it. Needs of the concrete world are more pressing than that of the philosophical. At the end of the novella when Pangloss goes off again about the best of all possible worlds Candide still listens attentively but redirects the focus to the physical world, saying:

"That is very well put, but we must cultivate our garden."